


Lie Back and Think of England

by melodicinkysin



Category: Cambridge Spies
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Canon Compliant, Insomnia, M/M, Male Homosexuality, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 16:31:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2857517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodicinkysin/pseuds/melodicinkysin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lying is like alcoholism... you're always recovering.</p><p>"Somewhere between the initial coax and the upward stumble, he apologized, leaning beneath the arm of one dear friend.  He vaguely remembered hearing Kim snort."</p><p>A few snapshots of Guy Burgess when outside of his sweet England, namely Washington DC and once he's pulled behind the Iron Curtain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Insomnia

He'd been stationed in Washington by the Foreign Office, and since he'd taken up living in Kim Philby's home he couldn't sleep. He'd go through several days of belligerently maddening nights, his only cure a bottle of whatever liquor he'd chosen to sedate himself with. But that was exactly what it was, this drunken and self-induced innocuous state. It was sedation, and he was always so tired... so very bloody tired.

He never slept, and couldn't. So he did the only thing a man of his sort can do when denied that precious rest: he lived every fucking day as though he intended to never sleep another night again. If he was to be a captive of consciousness, he would make it his.

He threw boisterous parties at the Philby house--much to the lady's protests--and made a show of experimenting his way through the men that attended. He seldom went a night without company though he couldn't help but notice a lacking comfortable scene among the American ponces. Perhaps that would always be a part of that posh England. But this was sweet America; the only lingering bit of English was Kim Philby's protesting wife. The poor woman, with her spotted dogs and tasteless custard, poems and bird watching. Guy didn't give a damn, and she endured her husband's allowance of Guy's indulgent parties and the variant men who did not leave until morning.

Perhaps Kim knew that he needed those raucous gatherings... that the reasoning behind loud swing and adoringly drunk attendees was to burn away the hours of restlessness. And so, most nights would begin with gin in hand, ending with some stowaway homsosexual in the upper rungs of those great American domes. They all fell to bed a little differently, and each lithe body occupied him when sleep refused.

One night, there was no party. He pittied poor Mrs. Philby and spent the evening in the parlor. An empty loveseat cushion kept him company when the frighteningly friendly country did not, and he sipped the hours away slowly, glass by glass. Each minute lengthened before him and slipped from the room so languorously, that by the time ten o'clock came about, he was near catatonic with a touch of madness. Kim came in, pulled on his shoulders and guided him to the guest room designated as his. Somewhere between the initial coax and the upward stumble, he apologized, leaning beneath the arm of one dear friend. He vaguely remembered hearing Kim snort.

Kim didn't leave him, that night, but opened one of Guy's volumes and read his way through The Merry Wives of Windsor while Guy became lost.

For a single night, he slept, only awoken when Kim, with dark circles beneath his eyes, rose from the chair to leave for work.

"We have some salt of our youth in us," Guy muttered. 

"Go the hell back to sleep."

Kim strangled a smile, and Guy scarcely saw it before his eyes pulled shut again, heavy and burdened with deathly sleepiness. It would be another week before he saw sweet rest such as this again, before Kim would pick up a volume and read him touches of Harry late into the night.


	2. No Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "A lot of history is just dirty politics cleaned up for the consumption of children and other innocents."
> 
> We look at him as a brazen hero, but I think we all know how the end truly went. A glimpse of Guy behind the Iron Curtain. A bit of an implied relationship with Anthony, but nothing more.

It was a bloody cold day, cold as anything he had remembered in Cambridge, but Cambridge had forsaken him for a place that called him 'Comrade.' He thought of that godforsaken fucking isle and loved it, cried out in many a drunken stupor. His nighttime blanket more often than not was a Russian sky, thick with smog. When it wasn't, his lovely Demyan drew him back into the lavish place he had been given. One of his many gifts as a hero of a country he didn't give a damn about. He had done it for England, but she would never welcome him back into her bosom. He dreamed of her still.

After enough vodka to curb his morning pangs, he stumbled to a phone. He called men that had publicly abdicated him from their lives, men whom he found himself darkened without. Sickly ironic, he thought, to be morose and bleak without them when he had always played their comedic source of light. He was always drunk, and they told him so. Today, he called Anthony Blunt, met instead with the pitchy voice of an office secretary for the college. The poor woman meant nothing but was unjustly subject to a desperate tirade, a clawing for attention. As his voice rose and he bellowed into the reciever about D-Day and the march on the Arc de Triomphe and the starving English and dying Reds, he begged. Every wrathful piece of argument was a plea to be saved.

She didn't let him finish, stuttering she'd leave a message before Guy was talking to a click. He shouldn't have called, but he didn't care.

He truly was nothing anymore. Moscow favored him but he didn't care for their favors. He wanted England, the home that had struck him from her memory. He had known everyone, there. Here, thousands knew him but he had not a soul for a friend. He spoke with Churchill once. Now he was little more than something Churchill--and the rest of them--wished to forget.

He would never again see England. He would forever wear his tie from Eton, forget the hell it had been in the 1920's and and reminisce on days he couldn't have. He would always wish for the Cambridge he'd bid farewell to, for those were the days of beautiful boys, scotch and toothpaste, picnics on he grass and four, talented friends.

Now he was a wasted soul, the best and the brightest gone wrong. He was England's 1930's promised star of youth, now nothing. He was a red, a red in blood red Moscow and he'd never return.

Not until it consumed him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you have it! Maybe one day I'll write more for him, but until then... it is done.

**Author's Note:**

> A short fic that I wrote as part of a 50 scenes table I never completed. Back from a time when I used to roleplay Guy Burgess in a journal-based RP game on dreamwidth. Hope you enjoy! Only two chapters, neither of them happy.


End file.
